Red Hat Ansible Engine Life Cycle

Overview

Red Hat provides a published product life cycle for Ansible Engine so that customers and partners can properly plan, deploy, support, and maintain their enterprise automation environments.

This life cycle encompasses stated time periods for each version of Ansible Engine. The life cycle for each version of Ansible Engine is split into production phases, each identifying the various levels of maintenance over a period of time from the initial release date. While multiple versions of the Engine may be supported at any one time, note that this life cycle applies to each specific version of the Ansible Engine (2.4, and so on).

Customers are expected to upgrade their Ansible Engine deployment to the most current supported version of the product in a timely fashion. Bug fixes and features are targeted for latest versions of the product (Full Support Phase), though some allowance may be given for critical security risk items for the prior release (Maintenance Support Phase). See below for more information on Production Phases.

Life Cycle Dates

Red Hat Ansible Engine Release Beginning of Full Support (General Availability) Beginning of Maintenance Support End of Life (EOL)
2.9 Nov. 6, 2019 After the release of Ansible Engine 2.10 (Approx. 4-6 months after GA) After the release of Ansible Engine 2.12 (Approx. 8-12 months after GA)
2.8 May 21, 2019 Nov 6, 2019 After the release of Ansible Engine 2.11 (Approx. 8-12 months after GA)
2.7 October 9, 2018 May 21, 2019 June 18, 2020
2.6 July 5, 2018 October 9, 2018 Nov. 6, 2019
2.5 April 4, 2018 July 5, 2018 May 21, 2019
2.4 October 1, 2017 April 4, 2018 October 9, 2018

Production Phases

To encourage the rapid adoption of new technologies while keeping the high standard of stability inherent in Red Hat enterprise product, the product life cycle for Ansible Engine is divided into two phases of maintenance, as described below.

Full Support Phase

During the Full Support Phase, Red Hat will provide:

  • Qualified critical and important security fixes
  • Urgent and high priority bug fixes
  • Select enhanced software functionality

This will be delivered in the form of sub-minor releases.

A release of Ansible Engine is supported under the Full Support Phase from the time that it is released until the next scheduled major or minor release of Ansible Engine. For example, Ansible Engine 2.4 (and any bugfix release to Ansible 2.4) would be supported under Full Support terms until the release of Ansible Engine 2.5.

Maintenance Support Phase

During the Maintenance Support Phase, Red Hat will provide:

  • Qualified critical security fixes.

These fixes will be delivered in the form of sub-minor releases. A release of Ansible Engine is supported under the Maintenance Support Phase until the subsequent release of Ansible Engine enters Maintenance Support phase. For example, Ansible Engine 2.4 would be supported under Maintenance Support from the release of Ansible Engine 2.5 until the release of Ansible Engine 2.6.

Scope of Coverage

Support is provided for use according to the published Scope of Coverage in Appendix 1 of the Red Hat Enterprise Agreement. For additional clarification, the below provides more detail specific to Red Hat Ansible Engine not provided in the Enterprise Agreement.

“Red Hat Ansible Engine” means the package deliverable signed by the Red Hat Engineering team. Support of this package includes but may not be limited to the following: connection plugins, inventory plugins, fact plugins, Ansible-playbook language and directives, core modules, and other miscellaneous core plugins provided.

Red Hat does not support what encompasses all aspects of managing automation, including but not limited to: design choices pertaining to project best practices, Playbook creation, configuration changes through ansible.cfg, and custom code implementation through inventory scripts, plugins, and modules.

Red Hat distributes packages for Red Hat Enterprise Workstation and Red Hat Enterprise Linux multi arch, but does not support them at this time.

Summary:

Support Do Not Support
Installation Modified modules, plug-ins, etc.
Usage Playbook development and debugging
Configuration Design
Core and Network Modules1 Community Modules
Certified Modules2 Technology Preview features
Connection, Inventory, Fact Plugins Custom code through scripts, plugins, and modules
  • 1Bug reporting (dependent on Life Cycle) and engineering bug fixes
  • 2Bug reporting only

For more information on supported control nodes and managed nodes used with Red Hat Ansible Engine, please refer to Supported Platforms with Red Hat Ansible Engine.